Katniss dreams that Snow is dead. Not of killing him: not of the bliss of blood and obliteration, but of his corpse hanging slack from that pillar in the City Circle. Eyes greying, the retinas depressed; mouth open, lifeless; a discarded marionette. Flies on his face. A silent audience surrounding her and this corpse of an old man, and she wakes in terror.

'Snow?' she whispers through the darkness. There is no need to whisper; who would hear them out here? 'Snow?'

She feels through the darkness for the shape beside her, but there is nothing — an empty bed, the space where a living person once was. The space where Rue once was, and Prim…

'SNOW!'

'Miss Everdeen?' There is panic in the voice that answers, then the sound of fumbling, then the flick of the flashlight.

Katniss sits upright, sweat-soaked and breathing hard, and for one mad moment in the yellow glow of the bulb she wonders why the tent is so huge and made of wood. And then her sleep disintegrates and she remembers. They are in a cabin. Snow is not beside her because he is in a different bed, just a foot from her own. Snow is staring at her, his fear levelling into concern as he understands that the only threat is her nightmare.

'Are you alright, my dear?' he says.

Katniss pants, her sternum shaking, a valley of sweat soaking her neck and breasts. With some insanity, she reaches out to the other bed and fumbles at Snow's body, patting her hand gracelessly against his arm and torso. Snow watches her with quiet alarm.

Satisfied, Katniss retracts her arm and falls back against the cot bed. 'You're still here,' she observes.

Snow nods slowly. 'I am, Miss Everdeen.'

'And you're not dead.'

A headshake. 'No.'

'Good. Great. Just…' She rests her palm against her sweaty forehead. 'I just had to check. I'm so used to you sleeping right next me. Waking up without you, I thought…' She gasps air into her lungs. 'I don't know what I thought.'

Snow is silent and thoughtful. The cabin is ghostly in the torchlight, eerie and empty, like some dead other world. But they are not dead, her and Snow. They are alive and they are together.

'Would you like me to sleep closer to you, Miss Everdeen?' says Snow. His voice is like tree sap and vanilla. 'If you want to share… or if you want me to sleep on the floor…'

He lets the suggestion hang. Katniss swallows and shakes her head. 'No. No, that's fine. We should just go back to sleep. It was a stupid nightmare. I'm sorry for waking you.'

'It's quite alright,' says Snow, and he flicks off the light. 'I do not mind. I never mind.'

It is difficult for Katniss to fall asleep. She does so in pieces, parts of her awake and aware and persisting into the dark even when other parts have faded away into unconsciousness. Katniss dreams of her home, of her study. She dreams of Snow smiling. She dreams of waking in her bed at home, her old home in the Seam, to see Snow sitting on her bed, just as her father used to do. Prim is asleep beside her.

Not Prim, don't hurt Prim, she tries to say, but her voice clogs her throat. Snow reaches out his hands: cool, old, and veined. They reach for her neck and Katniss can only feel relief that it is not her sister that he will choke to death. But when she turns her head, she sees that Prim's body beside her cold as stone, and Snow's fingers are cold as stone, but they rest not on her neck but on her forehead. He smooths back her hair.

'I was hoping you'd find your way here,' he tells her. 'There are so many things we should discuss.'

Katniss wakes. There is the smell of cooking meat and a tall presence beside her. She blinks at the ceiling of the cabin and still thinks she's in the Seam, her mother cooking, but then she sits up and she sees Snow, still shirtless, still bandaged, working at the stove between them with a saucepan.

'Hello,' she says, half-asleep.

Snow turns and offers her an odd smile. 'Good morning, Miss Everdeen. I am cooking one of those breakfasts-in-a-can. I used to love those.' He grins warmly. 'No amount of fine Capitol cooking can outdo the flavor of a canned meal after days without proper food.'

She wrinkles her face at him. 'If you say so.' She pushes herself upright, yawning deeply, and becomes very conscious of the tight cling of her t-shirt over her breasts. She pulls up the blanket to her chin, concealing herself, but Snow doesn't spare her a glance. 'I prefer eating things I've killed to those that came out of a can.'

'I can understand that,' says Snow. 'Would you like some?'

She nods and he serves her a plate of some weird mix of beans and lumpy meat and something she thinks might be a kind of bread. It is not the worst thing she has tasted, and Snow eats with gusto.

'Lots of things to do today,' he says as he eats, obviously in greater strength and cheer. 'Laundry. Then later I must look at your foot.' He gestures at it with his spoon. 'How does it feel today?'

She regards her bandaged toes. 'One foot is sore, but not much. The black one feels weird. Some pain, some numbness.' She shrugs. 'If I lose a few toes, whatever. I've got plenty left.'

Snow's smile is curious and strange. 'That's the spirit. I will wait until the recommended twenty-four hours are up to assess it. In the meantime, would you like me to wash your clothes alongside mine?'

'Sure,' she says. She opens her pack to pull out her bundled up spare clothes and adds her folded shirt to the pile. Nearly a month without washing. The smell is rank. It almost feels unfair to inflict it upon Snow, but he takes the heap with no objection.

Snow fills the sink with melted snow heated on the stove, then Katniss switches to alternating between watching the window and watching Snow as he scrubs each item of clothing with rapt attention and dedication. He even whistles to himself, a tune she does not recognize. She wonders if he killed people with the same degree of absorption.

She drifts to sleep again, and when she is awake Snow has hung the laundry around the fire. Her socks and his are comfortably side by side, like they've made friends. Snow must have found a needle and thread in the cabin, because now he is sat at the table and darning a hole in one of his socks. She rolls her eyes at him. What a ridiculous man.

Her eyes rest vaguely on the line of clothes drying by the fire — and then her heart clenches.

There hangs her bra. There hangs her spare underwear, still faintly bloodstained.

She feels sick, she feels faint. She just shoved the whole bundle of clothes at Snow without a second thought, like she was a child with an accommodating parent. He washed them! He handwashed them. He rubbed his fingers and thumb against the filth stained by her vagina and he whistled while he did it.

She cannot explain her feelings. Disgust, humiliation, violation, shame, and other things all tangled inside her.

'You washed my underwear,' she says accusatorily.

Snow glances up from his darning. 'Yes,' he says, confused, then looks at the drying clothes. 'I washed all the clothes you gave me.'

'I didn't mean to give you those.' Her glare is spiteful.

Snow looks uneasy. 'I thought it was intentional, Miss Everdeen. I would never have touched them had you not given them to me.'

'You shouldn't have done it. You should have checked,' she snaps.

The unease drops from Snow's expression. He looks at her with real annoyance. 'Miss Everdeen, you gave them to me to wash. I was trying to do as you wished. If you didn't want me to wash them, the mistake was yours.' His eyes flick to the ceiling, truly irritated. 'I have been sleeping by your side for weeks. If I had any interest in your underwear I could have taken them from your pack while you slept.'

Her eyes drop, abashed. 'It's disgusting,' she says without malice. Not, you're disgusting but I'm disgusting. It's like her burn scars but worse.

'Miss Everdeen,' he says, and his tone is kinder. 'We are human beings. We get dirty. We bleed and ooze and other unpleasant things. There is no point being coy about it out here.' He smiles. 'It's not the first time I've washed a woman's underwear.'

He returns to the socks, threading the needle through the fabric with curious elegance, like a swallow diving. Katniss cannot make sense of this man.

'Why are you so good at these things?' she demands. 'Sewing. Doing laundry. You were a soldier and then the President; I can't imagine you had much call for playing housewife in either of those jobs.'

She can see Snow's smile widen as he sews. 'I learned sewing from my cousin. She was a seamstress, and then a designer. When we were children, I often helped her with the simpler tasks. And you would be wrong about soldiers never sewing anything. Learning to repair and maintain one's equipment and clothing is essential.'

A cousin. He has mentioned her before. Katniss recalls the photograph she destroyed, that pretty blonde woman in the sharp-lined, beautiful clothes.

'Was that the woman in the photo?' she says. 'Your cousin?'

Snow's hand pauses briefly in its motions. 'Yes,' he says shortly.

'Were you close?'

Snow continues to sew and does not look at her. 'She is dead, Miss Everdeen. I do not wish to discuss her.'

And so they don't.

When the appointed hour arrives, Snow advances upon Katniss' bandaged feet with professional determination.

'Alright, Miss Everdeen,' he declares. 'It's been twenty-four hours. Time to assess the cyanosis.'

Snow is so delicate. He sits at the end of the bed and shifts her foot onto his knees like he is handling a baby rabbit, and then he unwinds the gauze. There is no pain; he is as careful as a dragonfly. The toes beneath are red and irritated and blistered, but it does not look like there is serious damage.

Snow gives her a bright smile. 'I am happy to announce that these are in good condition. I will drain the serum, clean, and redress them, but I do not think the damage will progress.'

Snow raises the scalpel to the blistered left foot. Katniss pulls a face as he slices the skin and clear liquid floods out. Then he pours medical alcohol onto cotton wool and scrubs the healing skin like he's shining a delicate weapon.

Suddenly she jolts and Snow gives her a look of alarm.

'Sorry,' she says. 'It tickles.'

He smiles in good-humor. 'My apologies.'

The alcohol stings, but otherwise the pain is minimal. Next he takes gauze and wraps it between each of the toes, and Katniss watches in fascination at the careful, gentle motion of his fingers as they weave the material, like she's a loom, like he's making something beautiful. His fingers are like a clever spider. Then he gently sets the foot aside.

'Done. Let's take a look at the more critical patient.'

She forces her mouth not to contort into a smile. What a weird, light humor he can wield. She supposes that one of the very first things he ever said to her was a kind of joke: They must be very proud of you.

He unwraps the next horrible present and Katniss takes a hissing breath at the unfortunate sight beneath the bandages. Two black toes. All of them red, some of them blistered.

'It could be worse,' says Snow brightly. 'But it will definitely need debriding. Fortunately, only two toes are affected, and not even fully. I do not think amputation is called for here. But there is a good deal of flesh to cut away. Hopefully, it won't be enough to compromise your balance.' He says this last part with deep thought. 'Balance is important for a hunter.'

'How much is this going to hurt?' she says. She speaks without trepidation, only with curiosity about the experience.

'You will have felt worse pain. I have not had frostbite before, but I had a similar procedure performed on me once as a Peacekeeper. And we had no painkillers. Also, because you have frostbite, the flesh I'll be cutting away is already dead. No nerves. You might feel very little for much of the surgery. Still,' he says, and holds up a glass vial. 'Morphling first.'

Katniss considers their morphling supply. One vial is almost empty with its use for Snow, but the other remains full. She considers too her black toe, then feeds five drops onto her tongue. Anxiety skipping through her, Katniss settles into the bed. Her only fear is the low, primal, animal fear of pain; she finds, with some surprise, that she trusts Snow completely. Their tools are primitive: one scalpel, one set of scissors, and that's it. But Snow applies a calm professionalism to everything he does and it's easy to make herself think she is in some makeshift hospital, not a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Snow loads a ball of cotton wool with alcohol, takes her foot in one hand, then scrubs the digits with gentle purpose. She studies him as he studies her feet and the morphling shimmers through her brain and she cracks a smile at him. President Snow, polishing her feet. Insanity.

'I am ready to begin,' he says. 'Has the morphling taken effect?'

'Oh I think so,' she says, her words eliding, her tone musical. She giggles at herself. 'Yes, it's very effective.' She decides it would be a good idea to nudge his hand with her blackened toes. 'Go on. Get to work.'

Snow indulges her with an affectionate smile, and then he begins.

There is no pain at first. The scalpel sinks into the black skin and Katniss watches, curious and revolted, but the dead nerves do not allow her to feel anything. Snow wields the scalpel like a beautiful pen, writing her open, filling her with words, perhaps. Her mind is pleasantly confused. The light is white and pale from the snow-blanketed world beyond and it makes him glow, like something from a dream, more light than man, not human at all.

Then something twinges sharply in her toe and Katniss jerks her foot. 'Ow,' she protests. 'You're hurting me.'

A wraith of an expression drifts through his features. Some of it is regret. Katniss' tingling, drugged brain thinks that there is something else in there. Something hungry.

'I apologize,' says Snow, but he does not relinquish her foot. 'This will hurt some. Please try to remain still.'

She lies back and watches his face rather than her foot and she tries to sink into the morphling-bath of her mind. The pain is not so bad, not so bad at all, and Snow is snipping her flesh away with neat little bites. What a waste of meat. Shouldn't they conserve their supplies? Didn't Snow say something about eating each other?

'I suppose this meat is too bad to eat,' she says in a sleepy drone.

Amusement curls Snow's mouth. His eyes do not leave her foot. 'Alas, yes, Miss Everdeen.'

Her head lolls. 'But you don't deserve the good meat,' she says. 'You're a bad man.' A yawn animates her and suddenly she wants nothing more than to have a big, nice sleep. 'I'm bad, too.'

Snow shakes her head and Katniss swears she can hear bells. 'There is no such thing as good or bad people, Miss Everdeen. There are only acts.' He snips the black flesh. 'And besides,' he says, and Katniss sees a crescent moon of severed black skin held between his fingertips, 'you have done fantastic things.'

Katniss does not know when she passes out, but when she awakes the light in the cabin tells her hours must have passed. She lifts her head and wriggles her feet. The damaged one is wrapped in gauze, but she can tell that not much flesh has been lost. Not even half a toe. Snow must have done a good job.

'Where is Snow?' she thinks and only realizes she has spoken aloud when a voice answers her.

'I am here, Miss Everdeen.'

She turns her sleepy head and notes how big and wild her hair is. She simply must wash it. And there, indeed, is Snow: lying in the opposite bed, a notepad and old, half-exhausted pencil in his hands. Katniss smiles at him.

'Hello you.'

He offers a warm smile. 'Hello. Are you feeling better?'

Katniss pushes herself up and blinks away her morphling-sleep. 'I think so. How did the debriding go?'

'Very well. You were extremely fortunate. Little flesh was lost and the wound looked clean. I am optimistic it will not need further surgical intervention. What you need to do now is rest.'

Katniss observes her foot, beautifully gauze-bound, tightly held in its wraps. She feels sorry for it and its poor abbreviated toes, as though it is not part of her but some other unfortunate animal she has had to carry around with her.

'What are you up to?' she asks, curious about his notebook.

'I found this in one of the cabinets. In the absence of anything to read, I might as well record my thoughts. And I am using it to sketch out the progress of your foot so I can track its healing.'

'What thoughts are you recording?'

Snow smiles and holds up the paper to her. She squints at the tiny handwriting, like lines of perfect ants. She cannot read a single word.

'What language is that?'

'Latin,' he says. 'Technically, it's the official language of Panem, but few can actually read or write it, let alone speak it. I could teach you.' His eyes brighten. 'Learning verb conjugations and noun declensions will help pass the time out here.'

Katniss pulls a revolted face. 'I think I would rather have my foot cut up again.'

Snow laughs, deep and rich the way that black gateau tastes, and Katniss smiles and shivers at the sound of it.

'Never mind, then. Would you instead like me to prepare for you a bath?'

Her heart leaps. 'Oh fuck yeah.'

Snow blinks at her. Katniss coughs.

'I mean,' she tries again, 'that would be nice. I would really like to wash my hair. And the rest of me.' Her eyes consider the cabin. 'But there's not much opportunity for privacy here.'

Snow indicates the table. 'I would like to try fixing the radio, if I can. I found a toolbox with screwdrivers, et cetera. It will keep me occupied and if we place the bath before the fire I can keep my back to you at all times.'

Katniss looks at the spot between their beds, then at the table and its radio, then at Snow. 'Okay,' she says.

She watches him set up the tin bath before the fire and then prepare the water. It is a laborious process. There is a saucepan and a pot in the kitchen and they have their own pan, and so in relays Snow fills these three vessels with snow, heats them over the fire until they boil, then empties them into the bath, and then he repeats. It must be cold for him, going shirtless into the outdoors. Sometimes when he steps back into the cabin there are snowflakes dusting his bare, white shoulders. Through the window she watches him bend to fill the pans with snow, perhaps thinking she cannot see him, and she sees him wince every time. She hopes he isn't undoing all the good work she did taking care of those wounds.

After fifteen minutes, about six inches of steaming water sit at the bottom of the tin tub.

'I think that's enough,' says Katniss.

Snow appraises the shallow water. 'It's not much of a bath, Miss Everdeen.'

'Yeah, but this is taking forever, and I don't want you straining your stitches.'

Snow appraises his own abdomen. 'I am coping well. Another week and I think the stitches can come out.'

'Either way,' she says, 'it's fine. You should take a break. You're in worse shape than I am.'

Snow continues to frown at the water for a moment longer. In his weird, perfectionist brain, this clearly does not meet his standards for a good bath. But he bows his head in acknowledgement and fetches from the kitchen an ancient, warped block of soap and a dismal rag. Katniss accepts them with a smile.

'These might make me dirtier rather than cleaner.'

'I'm afraid it is all we have.' His expression turns stern. 'Please do not put your feet in the water. It won't be good for them. I will get to work on that radio. I won't turn around until you give me leave.'

Katniss nods. Snow sets up at the table and draws the chair in tightly and throws himself into work on the radio, giving her the best privacy he can despise being four feet away.

Katniss wriggles her toes in relish at the sight of the bath, then winces with the pain of doing so. The morphling is starting to wear off. She pulls off her long-sleeved shirt, just her t-shirt beneath, then hesitates. It is difficult to bring herself to remove the rest of her clothing with Snow in the room, even if he cannot see her. She lingers, unsure, aware that he is probably listening to her and knows she has not fully undressed. That means he knows her discomfort. Will he thinks her hesitancy is a consequence of not trusting him, of thinking him a pervert? Or because she is so self-conscious about her disgusting body?

Or perhaps she just doesn't know how to countenance the idea of an adult man seeing her naked. Even when she and Peeta tried their ill-fated sexual couplings, it was in the dark with half her clothes still on. Apart from doctors, the last man to see her naked was Cinna.

Who Snow had killed.

It has been a long time since she felt anger at Snow. There is little point to her anger. It does not bring them food, nor warm the fire, nor strengthen their shelter. Anger is a worthless currency in the wilds. But it blooms in her briefly as she remembers a man she cared about, one of so many that Snow killed, and now she has this awful, inhuman creature to care for in his place.

An inhuman creature who draws her baths, and who tends to her injuries, and who cooks her meals.

The anger crests within her and then breaks in a soft wave, and then she yanks off her t-shirt. She pulls free her pants and underwear and stands for a moment, fully naked for the first time in months, her skin tingling, Snow so close to her. She spares a glance for the ruined flesh where she was set on fire and she wonders how well Snow can recall her marked skin, and then she lowers herself into the tub.

It is a good, hot temperature, but not so hot it burns. Resting her feet on the rim and submerging her backside, Katniss lets the snow-water slide up her body. The water is only deep enough to just crest her thighs and create a shallow pool above her pubic hair.

Katniss releases a very, very long sigh of intense pleasure.

A bath. A bath with only a few inches of water, yes, but a bath nonetheless. She doesn't even care if Snow hears her intense sigh. Perhaps he deserves to hear something from her other than complaints for a change.

Once she has accustomed to the incredible pleasure of sitting in hot water, Katniss picks up the rag and begins to lather it with the soap. Snow, meanwhile, is taking screws out of the radio. She notes that the tub has high walls and gives her plenty of coverage for the lower half of her body, but her breasts would be on full display should he turn. But Snow does not turn. He is quite absorbed in his task.

She begins to scrub her arms and watches with amusement how much dirt blooms in the water when she dips the rag in again. She has been diligent about scrubbing her face and under her arms and between her legs at streams they camp by, but her arms and legs and hair have had no treatment at all. Wetting her hair is absolute bliss and she exhales again in pleasure. Amusing herself, she wonders if Snow would say yes if she asked him to wash her hair, the way she used to do for Prim and the way her mother did for her. She could always threaten to shoot him if he refused.

But that is a silly thought. Once she has had enough of scrubbing soap into her hair and rinsing it (how she misses fancy Capitol shampoo), she scrubs her legs and then considers the rest of her body. She cannot place quite why, but though she didn't care at all if Snow heard her luxuriating in the water, she does not want him to hear her cleaning the more intimate parts of her body. Snow might not be able to see her, but he can certainly hear her naked body in the water. He would be able to hear the slide of her hands over her body, the massaging of soap into her breasts, the wet friction of her skin over itself. She does not know how it could be possible for a person to discern the difference in the sounds of hand on knee and hand on breast, but if anyone could do it then it would be Snow.

With immense care to be as quiet as she can, Katniss slides a hand between her legs and begins to rub at the dried blood and whatever-the-fuck-else that has congealed around her pubic hair. She shudders as she sees dark black clumps of dried clots drift away through the water like horrible jellyfish. It is good to scrub herself so thoroughly and feel for the first time in weeks that she is properly clean between her legs. It is soothing and deeply, gratifyingly pleasant. As she reflects on the simple pleasure of cleanliness and her eyes rest idly on the back of Snow's head while he works and she scrubs, she realizes her fingers have drifted to her clitoris. She moves them away and shakes herself. It has been so long since she gave herself any kind of sexual relief. How strange that she is capable of feeling any trace of erotic excitement in Snow's presence.

Her body doesn't mind his. She is getting too comfortable with him.

She rises from the bath and rubs her skin dry with her towel, then changes into the clean t-shirt, pants, and underwear drying by the fire. She airs out her hair by the stove.

'I'm finished now,' she says. 'You can turn around.'

He half-turns, glancing briefly in her direction, and offers a smiling nod. Then he returns to his radio, perhaps to communicate that he wasn't inconvenienced by her need for privacy.

He is a polite man.

'If you want to use the water, you…' she begins, then trails off. Back in the Seam, she and Prim would always share bathwater. Katniss would go first as the eldest, and then Prim. They couldn't afford the coal to heat the water for more the one bath. But Katniss stares down at the filthy grey water which holds aloft long, twining hairs from her head and short, wiry hairs from elsewhere, and she frowns hard at a wet wisp of menstrual clot. '…you'll have to boil some more,' she finishes, and then invests all her strength into pulling the bath to the door and tipping its steaming, dirty water into the snow.

She has to draw the line somewhere.

Snow wants to finish fixing the radio before preparing another bath, so he remains at the table as Katniss tries to rest her healing feet and occupy herself (fiddling with the blanket, watching Snow, staring out of the window). As she daydreams and watches the heavy snow fall outside, she sees one lone, brave squirrel venture along a snow-heaped branch. She evaluates the little beast. Well, there's no reason she can't shoot from the open window, should an animal be so foolish to walk into her jaws.

Katniss gropes awkwardly for her bow, eyes never leaving the squirrel, and then she shoves the window several times before it is freed from its jamb. The squirrel glances in the direction of the noise, confused but unused to the sounds of humans. Then it continues its futile search for food.

Katniss notches an arrow. Draws the string. Relaxes her body. It has been too long since she killed something.

Release.

One arrow, one squirrel, one perfect aim. It drops dead and twitching.

Snow turns sharply at the sound of the loosing arrow and Katniss grins at him. 'A squirrel,' she explains. Then she gestures her head to the door. 'Go on. Fetch.'

Smiling, enjoying her play, Snow heaves himself up then leaves the cabin. Katniss watches him trudge through the snow, white on white, and shakes her head at the ridiculousness of it all. What a strange man.

Game is much more plentiful up here than on their trudging hike. The cabin is a serviceable deer blind and no animals are accustomed to there being any activity within it, so squirrels wander past with some frequency. Once she has shot four of them, Katniss starts to feel better. One squirrel is barely enough for a sandwich filling, but four alongside the canned vegetables will make for a decent meal.

'Hey, Snow?' She holds up her brace of squirrels. 'If you wanted to take a bath, I could dress these at the table to keep me occupied. My towel is almost dry, if you want to borrow it.'

Snow nods. 'I would very much appreciate a bath.'

'I would also appreciate you taking a bath,' she says. For humor and clarity, she adds: 'Because you smell.'

He smiles at this. It is becoming easy to play with one another, to joke and tease.

Is this okay?

Snow's idea of a joke was torturing Peeta until he tried to strangle her to death. Leaving a rose in her home for her to find is what he thinks is funny. Crooning threats into her face — that's his idea of humor. What if he makes those jokes again?

She tries to ignore these thoughts.

Snow begins again to heat water in saucepans and Katniss stuffs the sleeping bag beneath the table so she'll have something comfortable on which to rest her healing feet. She lays out the squirrels in four neat lines and spares a moment of pity for their dead, blank eyes. She can't offer much pity to the world, but she has a grain or two left inside her.

Behind her, she hears the fabric-on-fabric and fabric-on-skin sounds of Snow undressing. She listens and she strokes the soft tail of the squirrels and she thinks that his beard almost gets that soft when he grows it out too long. His chest hair is wiry, but she is sure if she ran her fingers through his underarm hair it would be soft like hers is. What about the rest of his body hair?

Katniss, frowning, also tidies that thought neatly out of her mind and turns her attention to the squirrels as she hears a large body submerse itself in water.

'Damn,' she mutters.

'Is something the matter?'

'I left my knife on the foot of the bed.'

She can hear the water shift as Snow considers this dilemma. He speaks with dry humor. 'If you wish to turn around and fetch it, I do not mind. If you avert your eyes you shall preserve my modesty.'

Katniss drums her fingernails on the table, which are getting far too long, and then she turns carefully.

Then she bursts out laughing.

The tub accommodated her small body quite readily, with space to spare. But Snow's legs are incredibly long, as is his torso, and so he sits with his legs bent like some unfortunate giant forced to bathe in a pond. The awkwardness of it skewers her with laughter: his shining kneecaps, the high arc of his knees, his elbows hanging outside of the tub. She cannot stop laughing.

Brief irritation flares in Snow's face at her display, but it soon melts into sympathetic humor. 'Does my bath amuse you, Miss Everdeen?'

'You are too big for that thing,' she says, shaking her head. Then she stands and walks over to the cot, head turned firmly away lest she see anything beneath his waist, and grabs the knife. As she sits back at the table and begins to cut the skin from the squirrel, she shakes her head to herself. 'President Snow murdered thousands of people, and now he can't fit in a bathtub,' she says.

Snow's voice comes from behind her: 'President Snow is entirely capable of splashing you from this distance.'

She snorts, and then she slices open the squirrel with the ease of cutting into soft, sun-warmed butter. Skinning the squirrel is easy, something she's done a hundred times. Peel back the fur and expose the pink skin within. She wonders if Snow's pale skin will grow rosy in the hot water. She can hear his body and the water moving, the wet spray when he raises a limb from the bath, the soft sound of him scrubbing himself. She cuts off the feet of the squirrel and sets them in a tidy pile. There is a change to the sound of Snow's scrubbing, a drier sound, and she thinks he must be washing his white mane. The squirrel is a male, so Katniss grasps its genitals and neatly hacks them away so she can get at the stomach unimpeded. Squirrels always have larger testicles than you expect. Will Snow have the same compunction about washing his genitals as her? It's probably worse for him, the idea of touching his penis while she is so close. Katniss wheedles the point of her knife into the squirrel's stomach and squeezes out the entrails. What would it look like for Snow's large hands to massage himself clean? Does his cock look like Peeta's, or would it be new and unfamiliar to her?

Katniss pauses, laughs at herself, then clears her mind and sets to skinning the second squirrel.

She is just finishing up the final animal when she hears the wet sound of water droplets ringing through the air that tells her Snow is climbing out of the tub. She can hear the gentle friction of towel on body and she thinks that how only a few hours ago that towel was drying her own body, her breasts and between her legs, and now it is against Snow's. What surprising ways their bodies contrive to collide. It is a stark difference to their previous relationship, Snow watching her, distant and untouchable. Now she can touch him whenever she wants.

'I am decent again, Miss Everdeen,' says Snow, and Katniss glances around. He is toweling his hair, water-thick and dripping, and he wears only those long-johns, fresh from the laundry. She smiles at his wet hair and beard, his naked chest, his bare feet.

'Clean again?'

'Wonderfully so,' he says, and he sounds delighted. 'I am going to tidy myself.'

Katniss watches him as he takes his razor and scissors into the small washroom, peering into the cracked mirror and trying to corral his shock of hair into order. She tousles her own damp hair as she watches, her eyes on his back as he studies his reflection. That mockingjay brand is massive, limned in fat white burn lines that will never heal. There are other marks too, maybe from blades, maybe whips, maybe both. Freckles scatter his broad lower back and rivulets of bathwater wind between them. She watches him touch his hair and she touches her own hair, getting her fingers stuck in knots she hasn't tended to in weeks, and she realizes with vague horror that her eighty-year-old companion has hair in a better state than her.

She examines her split ends and chews her lip. 'I think I need a trim too. I've let my hair get pretty bad.'

'I could trim it for you, if you like,' says Snow, concentrating hard on shaping his eyebrows back into submission. 'Though I should say that while I have some limited medical training, I have exactly zero experience with hair.'

'Oh.' She considers the rough wreck of her hair, thickly knotted, clumped in places. Inexplicably, there is a piece of twig stuck in one of the tangles. Let Snow cut her hair? Well, it's hardly worse than cutting her feet. 'Yeah, alright.'

Katniss sits on a chair in front of the fire, jiggling her bare and bandaged feet, amused with herself and amused with him. Her mother used to cut both her hair and Prim's, even in the depths of her grief-ridden catatonia. She understood the value of appearances.

'I am first going to try to restore some semblance of order to this mess,' says Snow, his own comb in hand. He frowns at the teeth, wound with his own hair, then turns away from her to carefully pick it clean. Katniss rolls her eyes.

'I don't care if the comb isn't clean. It can hardly make my hair any worse.'

Snow offers a deep, troubled, contemplative hm by way of answer. And then, once he is ready to begin, he says in a distant voice: 'I don't want to get you dirty.'

Then she feels Snow rest a hand on the back of her head, a firm and strong hand that holds her gently in place, and then he sinks the comb into the ends of her hair. She can feel the tug of impossible knots refusing to give.

'This may take a while,' Snow observes, and Katniss smiles. She used to hate this kind of treatment, a kind of pampering. Letting her mother wash and brush and style her hair was more a favor to her than anything Katniss wanted to submit to, a way to make her feel useful when she was otherwise an absent parent. But she doesn't mind it from Snow. He's not doing it to make himself feel better, he's just trying to be helpful. One of his many little efficiencies.

'Is it strange going from caring for a country to just caring for me?' she asks.

Snow brings the comb-teeth through the labyrinth of her hair. 'Strange, yes. It takes some adjusting.'

'I guess you never thought you'd be looking after me, huh?'

The comb is a pleasant sensation as it runs through her hair. 'I often thought of it, actually.'

She frowns. 'Really?'

'Yes. During the Quell, when it looked like you might win, I thought that if you did you would be the next President of Panem.' The comb whispers smoothly through her hair. 'Naturally, I would be best placed to mentor you. Of course, haircare wasn't high on my list of expected activities, but I did want to take care of you. A shame Coin and District 13 got their claws into you so quickly.' She feels Snow's fingers rest against her skull as he teases out a particularly challenging knot. 'I would have taken much better care of you than her.'

Katniss' frown only deepens. What would that have been like? Had she shot Finnick, had Peeta died, had Haymitch not saved her? If she had been the rictus grinning Victor yet again, had Snow placed another crown onto her head and smiled at her in his eerie way?

'Do you think my sister would still be alive?'

She hears Snow breathe in and release a long, thoughtful sigh. 'Yes, probably.'

That is too hard to contemplate. 'She would have died anyway,' she says quickly. 'It's not like you were so concerned with her wellbeing. She was caught in the explosion where you were using Capitol children as a human shield.'

Snow teases free the knots and his fingers smooth her hair like he is sculpting clay. 'True. The thing about human shields, Miss Everdeen, is that one does have to keep them alive, or they lose their efficacy.' Sink the comb. Free the knots. 'In some ways, the final act of my presidency was an attempt to keep your sister alive.'

Katniss doesn't say anything. The firelight before her grows blurry, and then she sheds some few, quiet tears. Snow says nothing. He dips the comb in and out of her hair, his fingers touch her, and he grants her silence in her grief. The silence grants Snow the time to trim her split ends. The sing of scissors on hair is a pleasant sound, and Katniss watches curls of brown fall onto the floor and occasionally onto Snow's bare feet. Even through her tears, she smiles at that. She notices that he has clipped his toenails and rolls her eyes. She hasn't cut her toenails in months and she wonders if Snow disapproved of that when he debrided her frostbite. It's the kind of thing that would bother him.

These silly thoughts lead her step by step out of her grief, and she has stopped her crying altogether when Snow announces he has finished.

'There, Miss Everdeen. All finished.'

She slips from the chair and hobbles awkwardly into the washroom on her bandaged feet and stops short at her reflection. Clean, knotless hair, neat and fresh. Big and brown and fluffy, just like those squirrel tails. Snow has tamed the wildness out of her.

'I really don't look like I've spent the last month in the wilderness,' she muses, and she sees Snow's reflection come to join her.

'You look very nice, Miss Everdeen.'

She turns and she smiles at him. They are very close together in this little washroom. So close is his bare and bandaged chest, still flecked with water droplets. She realizes that these are probably not from his bath but from her own wet hair, flung out as he combed it. She thinks about wiping one away but does not do this. He smells different: not of dirt and sweat but of his cleaner natural scent, like bloody iron and something bitter. Is it getting easier for her to smell him?

'Anyway,' she says. The silence is getting too long. 'Thanks. I do feel better.'

His smile is unguarded and warm and it makes her feel warm, too, in her chest and skin and belly.

He was right that they could never be friends. But they are certainly something.

Life is strange in the cabin. Over the next week, Katniss heals and the both of them rest. There is not much to do, but Katniss is happy for the opportunity to sleep and heal. When she's awake, she sits by the open window, ensconced in the sleeping bag and blankets, and she waits with her arrow notched for something to wander by. As the snow grows gentler, more life can be seen. After three days the sleet stops falling entirely and the beautiful fatal white wilderness turns to wet and slush, and amongst this Katniss sights brave squirrels and opossums and foxes and even, once, a faraway deer. Too far to shoot, but it does her good to see the pretty beast pick its way through the cold, looking for something to give it life.

Snow finds endless little tasks to occupy himself. He brings firewood for Katniss to chop, he darns the holes in their clothes, he works on the radio, he forages for what little he can, he whittles wooden animals with a kitchen knife (Katniss is surprised by how long it takes her to even notice he has acquired a blade) and makes a little wooden menagerie. He's not very good at mammals. The cats are very lopsided. He occupies himself too with his notepad, but Katniss doesn't think he's writing on it; the movements of his hands are too broad. How mysterious he can be.

Katniss meanwhile studies the map and she daydreams silly things about living in the cabin. She could try to tan the squirrels and sew their skins together to make a blanket, and then she and Snow would be really warm. The stove (which they keep burning constantly) is excellent but part of her misses the cocoon of the sleeping bag. She belongs in a burrow, not a house. And Snow, though she never would have thought it of him, has taken so easily to this rough way of living. She watches him draw on his writing pad and she smiles. He looks like such a normal old man.

Katniss wonders at how little she minds his company. She has given up wearing her bloodstained bra now that she's not moving around much, and it hangs obviously from the head of the cot. It's hard to care if Snow sees it now he's bled on it and washed it, and he never so much as glances at it. She has stopped caring for the tight pull of her t-shirt across her chest, or that her nipples show through when the fire dies low and the cold tickles her skin. She sleeps without her pants, in underwear and bare legs, and if she needs to use the toilet in the night she walks there and back with her scar-shining thighs on display. She assumes Snow is asleep anyway, but even if he isn't, he'll look away.

Snow, meanwhile, is back to wearing shirts and pants again now his wounds are almost closed, but he does look a bit funny in the bloody one where he's had to darn the bear-rents. He sits at the table working, sometimes humming to himself, and he could be anyone. Trying to fit her memories of trauma against this pleasant man is getting so hard. Should she be concerned about that?

Katniss slides out of bed to stretch her legs. She has become used to walking oddly to protect her toes but she aches for the day when the gauze comes off and she can step normally again.

Snow glances at her and then rises from the table, holding a leaf from his notepad. 'Miss Everdeen?'

'Hm?'

He studies the paper, almost but not quite dissatisfied with whatever is on it. 'I recall back at my apartment you mentioned that you lacked any photographs of your sister. Well, I have an excellent memory, even if I am only a technically competent artist. I understand this is no substitute, but I thought it might be of interest to you.'

He hands her the sheet of paper. Katniss accepts it from his age-freckled fingers.

Her gasp is sharp and inward. It's Prim. Prim smiling, her tiny nose quirked, the eyes big and perfect. Prim, alive, as she once was. Katniss hasn't seen her face in years. She is sketched in sharp, balanced lines, oddly impersonal, but accurate. Katniss has no idea what qualifies as good or bad art, but right now she thinks that this is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

She stuffs a finger between her teeth to stop from crying.

'Thank you,' she whispers once she has recovered. 'Thank you, it's…' Her eyes meet Snow's. He is smiling, always smiling, drinking in her joy. Some distant part of her mind thinks of moths that feed on tears. Something unsettles her about it, something makes her shiver — but her delight over the drawing of Prim drowns it out. Overwhelmed with the happiness and relief of seeing her sister, even in pencil lines, smiling again, Katniss steps forwards without thinking, raises onto her tiptoes, and kisses Snow's cheek.

When she pulls back, his face is so incredibly close to hers. The fine lines that reach from his eyes, the gulleys beneath, the proud nose, the deeper lines that frame his narrow mouth with its sharp, elegant upper lip. All those features are quizzical, trying to interpret her gratitude — and then they dissolve into open joy. His smile is madly ecstatic.

'This is kind,' says Katniss, trying to restore some normality to the interaction. 'It's a kind thing to do.'

'I like to do kind things for you. It's most preferable to trying to kill you.'

She struggles to keep her smile hitched. 'Well, you're not going to do that anymore, right?'

Snow shakes his head. 'No. I never want to hurt you again.'

Her chest flutters with warmth, but somewhere deep inside that glow, there is a muffled alarm.

Be careful, murmurs the tocsin. He killed thousands of people. Think how he liked hurting you. Think of those roses. Tread warily, hunter.

Her smile slips a little, but Snow is still gazing at her with searing adoration. She feels safe. Her brain screams warnings and memories of bloodshed, but her animal body does not perceive any threat. How alluring it is to think of the source of all her terror and trauma as becoming a place of safety. She wouldn't need to be afraid anymore. Maybe her nightmares would go away.

Would it really be so bad to give in to those feelings?

'Snow—' she begins.

And then the windowpane behind them explodes as it is hit with a .22 caliber bullet.